The Chef's Hand Project (Drypoint Intaglio Prints)
The cutting board, in a kitchen is a culinary tabula rasa. Much of what happens in kitchen preparations involves the daily prep work for cooking the magnificent meals that emerge from restaurant kitchens. The images of these cutting boards are visual records of skill, artistry and labor, made visible in this intersection of food and art.
What began in my home kitchen as a revelation of the recorded memory and (Traces) of preparations on my thin plastic cutting boards became a deep curiosity – about the marks that chefs would make in their professional kitchens.
Through the processes of printing (intaglio process) and photographing the cutting boards on light tables, the fascinating range of the “hand” of each individual chef became evident (The Chef’s Hand). Many factors are also at play in the marks that are recorded: the seasonal produce, food preferences, artful technique and varying cuisines. All of these factors become intertwined in compelling visual images. In addition to the intaglio document of the cutting boards with black ink indicating the chopping and preparations, I wanted another kind of image that would serve as a ghost of the preparations by using a photographic reversal where the white marks hovered in a dark and infinite plasma.
